PLOT: A widower becomes convinced that his dead wife is trying to communicate with him via EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), which involves hearing the dead through the static of a detuned radio or likewise seeing them in the fuzzy wuzzy static of a TV screen. (And all these years you just thought that was the CBC! Bwahahahaaaaaaa!)
The best way to view the psychological thriller White Noise is by shrinking back and peeking through your fingers, and preferably while hiding under your theatre seat.
That a film this badly plotted and resolved could still be so frightening is a testament to Michael Keaton's gravitas as an actor and to the abilities of the sound and light guys who go all-out eerie on this one.
Keaton stars as a happily-married architect whose wife (Chandra West) has "expendable" written all over her. Sure enough, our hero gets bad news, but that's not really the point -- it's how the clock stops ticking, it's how the TV news keeps reporting sightings of her, it's how a stranger keeps parking his car near Keaton's house ...
That stranger (Ian McNeice) finally approaches Keaton and tells him that his wife is trying to contact him from 'the other side' through EVP -- electronic voice phenomena.
Through the static noises and images of various machines, this man has what he says are messages from Keaton's dead wife.
Keaton brushes the guy off. Time passes.
One thing and another convinces him that EVP is worth a look. A woman he comes to trust (Deborah Kara Unger) believes in EVP, and soon enough, so does he. That belief becomes an obsession.
Thereafter, Keaton's character gets involved in an entirely different realm of activity, and it doesn't come without the potential of great evil.
White Noise has many of the flaws peculiar to the supernatural genre -- loose ends, plot holes, a fabulous lack of logic, a deus ex machina ending and all the rest of it -- but it's creepily good for the creation of tension and the slow buildup of terror.
At the screening we attended, other jaded reporters confessed that after seeing White Noise they were afraid to venture to the bathroom alone. And that was just the men.
White Noise works because Michael Keaton makes you believe in what he's going through.
The visuals are sparse and interesting (up to a point); this is the sort of film in which silence is put to good use, and the better to hear you gasp, my dear. And all that.
Don't bring the kids.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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